Our PK2 are well into their first inquiry about children's author and illustrator Mo Willems, famous for his Piggie & Elephant and Pigeon books. Students have enjoyed listening to the Piggie & Elephant stories, in English and Chinese. Especially popular was our joined reading session (the same story both in English and Chinese), shown in the pictures below.
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They have also begun to share what they are noticing - "he is an author and illustrator", "he can draw anything he wants", "he is very good at drawing", "he wants us to practice drawing", "he has made a lot of books" - and what they are wondering about; "can he paint big pictures?", "what is his favourite animal?", "why is the Pigeon in the Piggie & Elephant books?".
In fact, one of the first wonderings expressed by one of our students was whether Mo Willems could teach us how to draw Piggie and how he goes about his illustrations in general. Fortunately, there is a wonderful video tutorial available online and our PK2 students have been excitedly practising to draw Piggie. (We will share your child's individual work via SeeSaw.)
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 | Some students have even followed Mo's encouragement to tell their own stories with his characters and proudly shared their picture books with us in the library. Over the next weeks, we will explore more of Mo Willems' books and searching for answers to our students' questions. As always through our author inquiries, we hope that our students will discover stories they enjoy to read, while at the same time learning a bit about the creators of the stories, getting insights on how they write and illustrate, to find some inspiration and ideas for their own book making too. At the same time, they experience and have the opportunity to practice inquiry skills such as asking questions and searching for answers to these in different ways. Right now, our PK2 students are most keen on finding an answer to the following question: "Can Mo Willems also teach us how to draw Gerald?" (The elephant from the Piggie & Elephant books.) |
